Podcast

Live Streamers, Snack Wars, and Disneyland Strategy Mistakes

Dis & Hers

March 19, 2026
34 min read

Disney fans have plenty to debate this week. In this episode, Lauren Hersey and Eric Hersey dig into the controversy around live streamers in the parks, Disney’s latest efforts to make vacations more appealing for families, the never-ending Disneyland vs. Walt Disney World snack argument, and the pricey lesson they learned firsthand about choosing between Park Hopper and Lightning Lane at Disneyland.

Live Streamers, Snack Wars, and Disneyland Strategy Mistakes Transcript

Eric Hersey: Welcome to Dis and Hers, the show about what’s happening in the Disney community from his, hers, and your perspective. I’m Eric.

Lauren Hersey: And I’m Lauren, today we are diving into a little bit of live streaming chaos in the parks, Disney’s push to win back families, and the ongoing snack debate between Disneyland and Disneyworld.

Lauren Hersey: And finally, whether Lightning Lane or Park Hopper is the better move at Disneyland and we just had to live through that expensive lesson to find out. So Eric, what is the big news about live streaming in the parks? Like chaotic chaos? Really?

Eric Hersey: Alright, so I don’t know if… Yeah? Yeah, it’s kinda chaotic. I don’t know if you saw this, but recently, the police actually swarmed Disneyland after a swatting call was linked to a live streamer. So, I saw this. Yeah, that’s the thing. That’s what I had to find out. So I originally saw on X, there was a whole bunch of talk about this live streamer oblivion.

Lauren Hersey: What’s a swatting call?

Eric Hersey: I’m not super familiar. don’t believe they just cover the parks. It’s probably just a live streamer that was at Disneyland. Well, these, it seems like he’s, you know, popular enough that he has thousands of people probably watching the stream and he was just doing his normal thing. But when you have that many people, you do tend to have some haters or people that don’t necessarily like you or are not happy with what you’re doing. And with that being said, they can do a thing like call the police and say that there is some type of emergency situation. So what I had to do was look up what swatting was. So swatting is basically it’s a hoax, a criminal hoax where someone makes a false emergency call, usually claiming like a serious like shooting or a hostage situation or a bomb or anything that would cause the SWAT team to come out. And yeah, so it has become a more prominent thing for when somebody that is streaming and has a large group of following. All you have to do is have a couple people that might not like that person call in a problem and boom, we have the SWAT team. So this actually happened at Disneyland. Dare I say while we were there, there’s a lot of footage of this gentleman from Oblivion being, you know, circled by Disney security and SWAT or like the actual police members in the Emporium.

Eric Hersey: And, granted the- I don’t know the live streamer from anybody. It didn’t necessarily seem like he wanted to fully cooperate, but then again, he also was, not doing anything and found himself being questioned. So, the word is that this has happened quite frequently, so the debate comes out of live streaming in the parks and how much should that be done? Should there be some type of limit or should Disney start enforcing something to stop the live streaming? this is where our conversation starts and this is where I want to hear from you and everybody else. What’s your thoughts on live streaming in the parks?

Lauren Hersey: So I think that there is maybe even a difference. I want to clarify first. Like last night after everybody went to bed, I was doing my normal Disney binge on YouTube and I was watching Dolan and Offhand Disney and he was attending an after hours event at Disneyland and he actually made reference to when he’s in the parks, you’ll notice that he’s talking kind of quiet. He’s holding his lavalier mic.

Lauren Hersey: kind of close to his mouth, trying not to be disruptive to others and that he can come home and he can do a voiceover or whatever in post. So that is somebody on their best behavior wanting to do the thing that they love and cover the theme parks without being disruptive to families or your peers around you. Now, but these these people that are live streaming, they’re little different than what Dolan was doing making a video about after hours, right?

Eric Hersey: Yeah, live streaming, so there is a difference between creating content and being live. The thing is with the live streamers, the reason you’re getting swatted is that somebody is there and they know what you’re currently doing and you might be live for an hour, you might be live for 30 minutes and people are watching along and you’re almost giving them a point of view perspective sometimes. So there are a lot and you will see them in the park and a lot of the time the live streamers do have elaborate setups, microphones, sometimes you’ll see multiple like.

Eric Hersey: You’ll see the phone recording and then another phone to monitor the live chat. And we’ve witnessed this. I think we’ve watched our fair share of live streamers during New Year’s. I believe there were people live streaming the different parks. Yeah. Well, well, that’s the thing is there are live streamers and they get a lot of views. There are popular YouTube and Twitter and all these channels that get a ton of views. And this is how they’re kind of monetizing. It is not the exact same thing as a YouTuber that is creating content, clipping it together and vlogging. So but the live streamers have been known to be a little bit more disruptive because they are doing commentary while walking down and literally looking at their phones to see what’s commenting and they might run into you or they might not. So there is a slight different and I think that has caused some of the uproar. And funny enough, we just did an episode talking about the nicest influencers and while I was looking for that, I did stumble upon an actual YouTube video from a guy named hello. It’s Brian now. Hello. It’s Brian is not a mega influencer. Looks like he has several thousand subscribers, and it doesn’t even think it looked like he covers the Disney parks. I stumbled upon this because the blog was our Disney influencers even worse than Disney adults and this was a About a 15 minute video was a very well done educated, but it had 567 comments and they’re enduring this video. He very much discusses like and everyone else in the comments discuss the biggest differences so I grabbed a couple of the Comments here and I just wanted to throw those out at you Lauren and have you look to see if we’ve witnessed this and of like Yes, if this is happening should we get these live streamers shut down did did any of these kind of catch your eye?

Lauren Hersey: First of all, I will not be calling the SWAT team. Just so we are clear. But alright, let’s take a look at some of these comments. this one is TurkJay. And they said, I was watching a vlogger the other day and in order to prevent getting a hit on the music in Pirates, he said he was just going to talk over it. Loudly, apparently. He had no concern for any of the other guests sitting in that boat.

Lauren Hersey: with him. What’s worse that or the kid that got up and peed in our friend’s boat. It’s his T-World. I don’t know.

Eric Hersey: man well I yeah no well I mean so if you’re not familiar basically what happens is if you’re streaming and you hear like it is very easy for these platforms to get copyrighted music and they flag your video and immediately take it down or demonetize it and so forth so he was just like yeah you know we’re gonna hear yo-ho Pirates life for me but I’ll just talk real loud and that would annoy me that is just as bad as those that are reciting the you know the stretching room routine and us Disney fans aren’t a big fan of people that are like, let us experience it from the people that, you know, the actual voice actors, not the friend who is going to be, you know, get every third word right.

Eric Hersey: Here was another one from Sebastian Smith. And this is actually just a former cast member. It said they work the banquet bars at Disneyland Hotel. And what the problem is that people overstay at the parties and they would have to stay. I mean, these parties end what? 11, 12, maybe one. But these people would stay until 2 a.m. just live streaming. And they wouldn’t get home until 4 a.m. So that is just a matter of very… It’s not very nice to the cast members, knowing like when… It’s one of those things where I’m gonna go to a restaurant or a fast food joint at 11.59 when we know they close at 12. And you’ve seen those funny videos where the person goes in and then the crew member screams. And I think they’re all planted and funny, but I don’t know. That is one of those things where, yeah, like you… Just because you’re live streaming and you’re making money, don’t make people chase you out, just leave when everybody else does.

Lauren Hersey: Alright, so speaking of not being nice to cast members, this one’s gonna make some people mad. Alright, so this was Cryling Quinn, he or she says, I am a skipper on the Jungle Cruise and one of the live streamers with a very iconic name might I add occasionally comes on and rides the Jungle Cruise.

Lauren Hersey: while still in the boat, they verbally rate and make comments on the skipper’s performance in their livestream, which is a multitude of the skippers have deemed as extremely rude at this point. That’s like, that’s like, like scum on shoe, like gum, scum shoe.

Eric Hersey: That’s awful. That is, that’s… Yeah, don’t do that. Like, literally, if you don’t like the skipper, I mean, we’ve all had good skippers, great skippers, and, you know, skippers that just do their typical spiel. To rank them in front of them, geez. Either way, shouldn’t just… Live streaming for that matter, I don’t mind a live stream if you’re not talking, you’re just walking around the park. I do think when it comes down to, if you’re giving your personal narration while we’re trying to enjoy something, yeah, no thanks.

Eric Hersey: So if you’re on your own boat or you’re on your own part of the queue where you’re not disturbing anybody, you can live stream and so forth. But once it starts impacting other people’s enjoyment, then I have a problem. So I would say, want to hear from you. Are you pro live streaming? Do you enjoy watching that on Facebook or on YouTube? Or, hey, would you be cool if basically the parks Disney says, now we’re not going to allow live streaming anymore? You can record stuff.

Eric Hersey: Of course, I have no idea how they would enforce that.

Lauren Hersey: Right, right. And I mean, golden rule, people. Treat others the way that you want to be treated. Like, would you want me screaming yo-ho in your ear? I don’t know.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, right. Alright, Lauren, you stumbled upon his next story, actually. How did you find this?

Lauren Hersey: because I go down the scroll hole. I like what was I looking at? I don’t even remember. But this was an article about how Disney wants families back in the park. So the name of the article is Disney’s new push to win back middle class families with lower prices and kid focused experiences. And I stumbled upon this one from the Disney Tourist blog.

Lauren Hersey: feel free and head over and check that one out. in essence, what this says is that Disneyland and Walt Disney World are indeed starting to roll out a series of pricing changes, some discounts and some really family focused offerings. And I think it might be in response to some of the criticism that the parks have been too expensive for the middle class. Now if you’ve read any other article or the op-ed in the New York Times you know that Disney is not particularly concerned about you know whether you like it or not they still do have to stay in business and businesses are there to make money so Anyways, but this is saying that they are, you know, making more attractive for middle-class families to come to the parks. So just a couple examples of this. Disneyland is expanding access to its lowest ticket, which is $104. And that they’re increasing the available dates. I think right before we went to Disneyland, they had tickets as low as $50 for kids.

Lauren Hersey: in state to try to encourage them. We have also seen this happen starting last year at the Walt Disney World Resort with Cool Kids Summer and this year’s Cool Kids Summer discounts were even crazier than last year. So there is this deal

Lauren Hersey: that has the free park hopper upgrade and the savings on multi-day tickets up to $369. So big savings there. We all know our favorites, oh my gosh, I’m so excited, are coming to Disneyland. We are getting Bluey, Bluey’s best day ever.

Lauren Hersey: And there’s also gonna be like a 599 kids meal deal tied to Bluey to make it more affordable for families. And word on the street is that like even our cast member friends are getting some additional training specifically focused on assisting families with young, young children.

Lauren Hersey: you know, to improve the guest experience. So not only do we have to get you there, we need to get you to come back because that is Disney’s barometer of success is the intent to return. So it’s lovely you’re going to come and spend your five or $10,000 one time, but please come back next year.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, and this is funny because they are kind of backpedaling or trying to course correct the issues that happened a little late last year, especially when it comes down to what the New York Times article that talked mostly about pricing out middle class families. So of course you read this and then we say, all right, we’re going to talk about this and we have to find kind of.

Eric Hersey: Why we’re here in the first place. So there were a couple articles that you dug up and sent over. the first thing I wanted to talk about was you found Disney has abandoned middle-class families. This was from pop culture crisis. It was like a 15 minute podcast on YouTube, which.

Lauren Hersey: Those people were so angry! But if you want to hear some passion…

Eric Hersey: Right, right, so I was watching a little bit of this and this really came in this, was September 29th when this came out and they were primarily talking about Disney Plus, which has nothing to do with the theme parks, but how Disney just in general is increasing, you know, pricing out the middle class families.

Lauren Hersey: they increase their annual praise increase around the time that they do their annual Disney Plus. That’s, think, two together.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, yeah. Well, the fact is they went from $12 a month for the premium plan on Disney Plus to pretty much $19. So, and it’s been the fifth price hike since the launch. So that was where, so if you want an interesting watch, go and check them out. Now, granted, it’s a little outdated, but you can see why the anger is coming through. And then you found one that was really funny because I’ve never even heard of this forum, which is 2p’s refugees.boards.net. And I mean, it was a…

Lauren Hersey: I mean don’t don’t don’t say the name. It’s Jeremy’s girl is the P god.

Eric Hersey: Well, I think that’s the status. That’s the funny thing is, like, I’m not really sure what this is, but this Jeremy’s girl, the P God, essentially had an interesting article. It was the, it was the New York Times article that they shared, which of course brings in general comments and the, the, the article was paywalled. So I didn’t necessarily get to read the whole thing. Can’t say I’m subscriber to New York Times or post or what have you.

Eric Hersey: but there were tons of content and Comments based off that which one was really funny or at least one that I thought was interesting was posted on there is as someone who has had a lot of Disney nostalgia It was the vacation. I grew up taking every four years and could drive to Disneyland The last they went was in 2019 because frankly how cheaper to travel internationally than it has been to do the Disney experience and that that notion is not been the first or the last time I’ll hear that is now it is officially international travel to see all types of things is is cheaper than going to the Disney parks. What’s your thoughts on that, Lauren?

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, I mean, we’ve talked about it before that it is, you know, probably less expensive to travel internationally, but there is still something to be said for our domestic parks, different strokes for different folks. But I like this person. They say that this is Andy in Atlanta. It says I’m just going to say it. Disney is an easy target here. But the reality is the entire entertainment leisure world continues to shift in this direction. Anybody that’s on to a concert or sporting event lately. He talks about going to an NFL game and it cost him over a thousand dollars. So like you are seeing this everywhere and I like to play devil’s advocate here because we at the end of the day like we love Disney we go all the time they take our money. So I’m going to try to justify the cost for you for a second and you can tell me.

Lauren Hersey: You can give me a big old thumbs up or thumbs down if you think I did the thing. So rather than fight it, we’re just going to look at overall value rather than the upfront cost of you paying the money for your ticket in your hotel. So if we’re looking at a full park day for the Herseys, I would say that’s probably about 12 or 13 hours. Would you say that’s fair?

Eric Hersey: Listen, you’re the one counting. I’ll take your word for it.

Lauren Hersey: We are, we are rope dropped to, to, go as long as we can into the evening. So anyways, so if you use 13 hours, the cost is roughly about $14 per hour per person, which is far, far lower than what you’re getting at like a concert or a sporting event or a live show or even like movie level pricing is what we’re talking here. And while

Lauren Hersey: a guest is in the park, you can expect to, you know, ride or take part in eight to 12 ride shows, attractions, interactions, that kind of thing, averaging about $15 per attraction, which is comparable or actually cheaper than, you know, some escape rooms and mini golf. So you tell me there, what would you rather do?

Lauren Hersey: And then we’re looking at transportation. I mean, we just got back from Las Vegas and we probably had a day spending hundreds of dollars in Ubers, but with Disney, you’re getting the buses and the motor rails and the boats and the gondolas and all of that. Um, that can easily exceed, you know, $80, a hundred dollars a day. Like I said, in Las Vegas, you’re not

Eric Hersey: right.

Lauren Hersey: paying for that there. So you also are having, you know, the price of convenience. So, and I mean, for me, mostly is, you know, if you think about where you want to be, where you want to be spending your time and your money, I tend to feel like, you know, we’ve made some pretty amazing, like long-term memories with our family. and that it’s not even comparable but because I think that the environment and the atmosphere all lined up. So what do think Eric? Did you give me thumbs up, thumbs down? Like, justify?

Eric Hersey: I think you sell your point very well, but the argument here is did these prices are great, but it’d be even better if these prices were even lower, right? That is the argument. So the middle class is saying, hey, I understand that maybe you would like $14 per hour for the 13, but we would like it better at eight. So hopefully Disney can get back. don’t think, I mean, prices will never go down, but maybe discounts will be good and maybe other things will change around. But that’s kind of the…

Lauren Hersey: my gosh, yes, please please please please yes

Eric Hersey: fun battle right now that if they are course correcting that is good for us and of course I think the date of recording it is Eiger’s last day so we got tomorrow in charge here soon so we’ll see what he does when it comes to the parks.

Lauren Hersey: Yes, yes. Maybe you listen to Michael Eisner and saying, you know, he’s sad that the rate of acceptance is not where it’s at for people to get in. So you never know. Come on, Josh. We’re holding out hope for you.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, that’s it. But all right, so it’s time for a quick break. But when we get back, we will actually get into another debate that might divide the Disney fans more than anything else, more so than even money. And that involves food. So we’ll be right back.

Eric Hersey: Go ahead, you can bring us back.

Lauren Hersey: Okay, and we’re back. And I am ready to discuss one of my favorite things because if I am going on a Disney vacation, I am eating my way through vacation calories do not count. There’s $8 cheeseburger rolls that did not happen. And so I brought this topic up to Eric. And I mean, what did you what did you say when I brought the the debate up between Disney World and Disneyland snacks?

Eric Hersey: that you’ll have to do all the talking because it’s all the same to me because I’m not necessarily a foodie. I think that was my main thing. But yeah, we, basically made reference multiple times while we were walking around Disneyland that the snacks were so much better. And let’s be real, snacks are things from general carts.

Eric Hersey: It would be items that you can get from a quick service. We’re not necessarily talking sit down or restaurant quality meals. We’re talking snacks. So I feel like you have the floor to not only give your opinions, but also argue and we grab some general commentary online to help. But just let everybody know, I pretty much will eat about anything you get in front of me. And I don’t necessarily have a giant preference or a very diverse palette to be like, this is so much better.

Eric Hersey: I will literally eat anything. So.

Lauren Hersey: And if you follow Eric on social media, will see he eats ramen noodles every single day of his life and Starbucks. So that is how he exists. I mean, have some fun with me. Debate to tell me what your favorite snacks are so I’m not alone in this. But I guess I have to start at the beginning and saying that like I never really noticed the difference. So this is our third time out to Disneyland. Go to Disney World all the time.

Lauren Hersey: and I say it all the time that like Disney World has so much better merch than Disneyland but

Lauren Hersey: This time, I also think it has to do with preparation. So I have to shout out AJ over at the Disney food blog. She got that new book, Disney Adults, so check that out. But one night in middle of the night, I’m watching Disneyland videos and I stumble upon one of hers, you know, it’s like the must try tantra, you know, snacks or whatever. And so some of them looked pretty appetizing. Things that I didn’t even know like existed.

Lauren Hersey: I a theme park like a baked potato that I was making some notes in my phone so when we got out to Disneyland I basically wanted to try these snacks and see if they were worth the youtuber hype because you know some things you buy are and you know some things are not so I had my little note out for the duration of the

Lauren Hersey: the trip and I went item by item by item and I just have to say just to like shout out a few.

Lauren Hersey: The red raspberry macaron at Jolly Holiday, like literally if you’re going to get this sweet treat, you need to mobile order it like at least an hour in advance unless you want to wait in like a crazy line. So that should tell you something there. But it had, it was raspberry and, but it had fresh.

Lauren Hersey: raspberries in it in addition to the like jam or whatever else was in this macaron but it was delicious and the last two times I was like loving the alien macaron from pizza planet they didn’t have it this time

Lauren Hersey: but they also had a really cute like birthday cake macaroon for the 70th and I swear I do eat more than macarons. But those were the big ones at Jolly Holiday. What did you think of that sugar cookie that I got you from Jolly Holiday?

Eric Hersey: Listen.

Eric Hersey: We were walking by and you guys got your little pictures with these cakes or so forth and I took one bite as I’m allowed in these festivities. They were both delightful. And then you hand us this sugar cookie that was garbage. And I was like, all right, Hunter, you want this? Our 19 year old. And he took a bite and handed it to the eight year old. And he took a bite and handed it to the 15 year old. And sooner or later, we’re all like, yeah, that was no good. And we just threw it away. So we were not happy with that cookie. I don’t know what was wrong with it, if it was a bad batch.

Eric Hersey: or what have you, but yeah, no, not a fan of that.

Lauren Hersey: And speaking of sweets, we did have the Matterhorn Cream Puff, which was giant, giant. And that, was in the same spot where you got like the cheesy garlic pretzel bread.

Eric Hersey: that was really good. The cheesy garlic pretzel bread was amazing. I did get a couple bites of that. I didn’t try the puff.

Lauren Hersey: And there’s also another cheesy garlic bread placed at the front of the park. So you can get several of those. I had to try, it’s the 70th anniversary version of the gray stuff at the Red Rose Tavern. It’s called the birthday stuff. And I thought it was like a mousse and it had a cookie in the bottom. It was amazing. I know that you pooped

Lauren Hersey: poo on my baked potato, but like I would eat that baked potato at, tropi- it’s Tropador, by where the new Bluey’s best day ever is going to be. We totally got lost.

Eric Hersey: I’m not upset about your baked potato. I liked the baked potato. What I was upset was the false advertising of the superior baked potato. So when we got to Disneyland, there was your brochure, your park map, and on the back it said at the refreshment post, you can get a buffalo chicken baked potato in which both Lainey…

Eric Hersey: and I, our 15 year old daughter, were like, yes, absolutely. And I go there and they look at me like I have a third eye. It literally was like, I’ve never heard of this thing. And I did not have the flyer the pamphlet or the brochure in my hand to show them. So I had to walk out and I’m like, where can we get this baked potato? So I was just mad at baked potatoes from that point on, just because I couldn’t find it. I have no issues with your baked potato. But to get back, rapid fire any other snacks that you have because…

Eric Hersey: Ultimately you love these Disneyland snacks and we kind of want to hear from you guys About Disney World. Is it better because there were a couple You found some tick-tockers and vloggers and it’s funny It’s like one of these guys was like trooper five one five seven s that when the vlogger was saying Disneyland is so much better and he’s like you’re kidding, right? so I don’t think you’re a hundred percent in the ownership of Disneyland is much better than Disney World. think we’ll have some arguments there. But what else at Disneyland do you want to mention?

Lauren Hersey: well…

Lauren Hersey: Bear over here says I went to Disneyland in May of this year and was just at Disney World a few weekends ago and was with the same people and we kept saying how the Walt Disney World food was better than Disneyland. Am I missing something? We were foodies and not impressed. Yes, they were missing something. They needed to watch AJ’s vlog on the snacks to actually buy because I’m sure they’re not all created equal.

Lauren Hersey: here but I mean listen I am an equal opportunist like either like our food is what like unites us you got your cheeseburger pods you got your school bread I know it’s not a snack but I my perfume at Disney World like there are you know a thousand it is not it is not I was just thinking about snow Norway just thinking about it

Eric Hersey: Mm, yeah.

Eric Hersey: That is certainly not a snack. I’m not sure how that even falls in. You went from school bread. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. But no, there’s lots of good food. I mean, we snack on both coasts. All right. Let us know what your favorite snacks are, either one, and which one’s better if you visited both. Either way, we’re not stopping snacking from either. But I do want to move on to our last little story, and it is a little bit more Disneyland specific because we fell into this dilemma.

Eric Hersey: We went out to the park and we used our good friends, Unlocked Magic, to buy some Disneyland tickets and they had this little section on there, do you wanna buy Park Hopper, do you wanna buy Lightning Lane with that? And we chose not to, cause we’re like, all right, we’re at the park for five days, we’re just gonna do Disneyland 3 and California Adventure 2, we’ll be able to get everything done, this, that, and so forth.

Lauren Hersey: And you can buy the Lightning Lane per day. I do have to a disclaimer there. So even if you buy the tickets from Unlock Magic or anywhere else for that matter, you can buy your Lightning Lane individually each day. You don’t have to buy it as a part of the package. But if you opt to buy it for your whole trip, it locks the price in at that time. So it was about $37 a day when we were there. Sorry, continue.

Eric Hersey: But what’s our dilemma? We got day two. We’re at California Adventure.

Lauren Hersey: it’s the food. It’s back to the food. We did not know. We’re not California people, but it was the opening of Food and Wine Festival over at DCA. So we had our first Disneyland Day. It’s fine. We rope dropped our Disneyland and then rope dropped DCA. And, you know, it was fine for about the first hour, 45 minutes, maybe. And then the Sea of Humanity came in. Everybody was wearing their plates around their necks with their sip and savor pass.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, and we invited a friend to come over and we wanted to show them a good time. They haven’t been at Disneyland for eons and we’re like, we’re going to have them come here and we’re not going to be able to do anything. And it’s a hundred minutes per attraction. And we’re going to, they’re going to look at us like we’re crazy because we love Disney and we talk all about it. And ultimately they’ll get to do, you know, little mermaid and that’s it. And so, and so we got to the dilemma of like, no, what should we do? And at this point in time, we started saying, well, Should we buy a park hopper and be able to jump back because the waits over at Disneyland were a lot shorter, right?

Lauren Hersey: Yes, yes, and so that is what we ended up doing. ended up, it was a game time decision. So it was, you know, by the lightning lane.

Lauren Hersey: At this point it was probably already maybe what, two o’clock. So like I guess DCA sells out of their like lightning lanes pretty early in the day for the big rides. So it was either that or it was upgrade our five day park tickets to park hoppers. And so that is what we ended up doing, biting the bullet. I think it was like an additional maybe $600.

Lauren Hersey: and then transferring our friend’s ticket to Disneyland. And I still don’t know, Eric. Do you think knowing what you know now and what we did for the remainder of the trip that that was the most economical thing or Lightning Lane or stay in DCA and find something else to do?

Eric Hersey: I mean, if we didn’t have a friend coming over, I would say we just stay and eat and walk around and just be aware that like we’re going to anything we want to do. But I was really a matter of trying to show somebody a good time at Disney and show them so. I in hindsight, and what we’ve done is we’ve went online to find out what people would do, because if we would have had a lightning lane that day and booked our stuff early, then we would have been able to hit our ride quota per se. And we can deal with the sea of humanity. We really can. And we know how to navigate the park.

Eric Hersey: And but since we didn’t have that opportunity because it was already sold out, the question is when you’re going now, what would you rather do? So we you found some Reddit forums that basically asked the same question Park Hopper or Lightning Lane. And the examples are, know, hey, we’re going to the parks here. Which one should we do? And you do see a variety of answers. I don’t know if there is a set answer. There’s somebody that says, Ma, MSN says Lightning Lane, you only ever need one day at DCA.

Eric Hersey: And then somebody like particular, yeah. And then this other person says, yeah, I can’t say it. And then this other person says, we just got back. Do not spend any extra money going to California Adventure. The Lightning Pass only worked for seven rides, three in which were closed. So some hate, but then we also have someone we did three days with the kids. One were 11 and 13, not too long ago. And we had park hopper tickets and only used them once to leave DCA early because of the early afternoon.

Lauren Hersey: I mean, I guess I also did not realize the discrepancy, I guess, between Disneyland and DCA is just the volume of rides. I don’t know the amount of rides at each park on the top of…

Eric Hersey: There’s 30 plus at Disneyland and I think there’s 11 at DCA. Yeah.

Lauren Hersey: And like eight. Yeah. So that does make it more challenging. And so there’s not really a lot of places for the people to go. Like we did do Turtle Talk with Crush and like they don’t have as many shows, maybe even that you could, you know, go just watch a musical act or something like that. So on a normal day, on a normal day, I think our

Lauren Hersey: a plan would have worked just fine being in the parks for five days. But I will tell you when we went back to DCA on like say like a Tuesday, it was equally as busy so much so that we went back to the resort early that evening because it was just wall to wall on a Tuesday. If you’re regional person, aren’t you like

Eric Hersey: Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren Hersey: you coming for dinner? Is that like because we’re not from out there out that way, but I think if it wasn’t food and wine that our original strategy would have been just fine, but be aware take yourself a sweatshirt and know that there will be crowds at DCA.

Eric Hersey: Yeah. Well, I think there’s one thing here that we would love to hear from you, but I’m also going to pass this over to our friends at the case for with Chris Cox. I’m not sure if you’re familiar, but Len Testa, Jim Hill and Chris Cox actually have a show where they debate things like this and they have talked about park hoppers and lightning lanes for the East Coast. But I would like to give them this topic itself and see what their thoughts from Disneyland, because I think this is a very.

Eric Hersey: complex topic that probably needs some analysis and some analytics and I’m sure Len can do that and I’m sure Chris and Jim also have their fair say of opinions on this but we want to hear from you what do you guys do when you go to Disneyland are you park hopper are you lightning lane or you neither and you tried to work the system like us and then end up in a very very busy park and nothing is going well and you are going to be stuck in lines you let us know but

Lauren Hersey: No judgment either way, Judge for Joan. Alright, well that does it for this week’s episode of Disney and Hers. For more, make sure you hit up DisneyHers.com. There you’ll find articles, episodes, updates. And if Disney’s your vibe, be sure to hit subscribe.

Eric Hersey: Alright, and remember watch what you post, you might end up in our next episode. Thanks for watching and listening!